Traffic School Now Available for Home Study

Traditionally, traffic school has been a grueling eight-hour course on the do’s and don’ts of driving that many motorists reluctantly undergo to avoid insurance hikes and court fines.

But starting this week, a radical new version of traffic school has taken root in Ventura County.

It is an interactive home study program taught by videotape and computer that is now available for a three-day rental at 16 local Blockbuster Video stores.

The program was approved by the county’s Municipal Court judges late last year, and Ventura County is the first jurisdiction in the state to test it.

“We are quite excited about this,” said Sheila Gonzalez, the court’s executive officer. “We think we are setting the stage for other courts to come forward.”

The program works something like this:

Joe Motorist gets a speeding ticket and decides to go to traffic school. Instead of attending a traditional daylong course, he goes to his local video store to check out the home study program.

For $39.99, he takes home three videotapes and a tiny computer the size of a TV Watchman. After viewing each hour-long tape, Joe Motorist must answer a series of questions posed in an accompanying computer program.

Once he has completed the course, Joe Motorist returns the setup to the video store, which downloads his traffic test and forwards it to the courts.

“It is very simple to use,” said Michael Curran, vice president of U.S. Interactive, the Houston-based company that created the program.

The home study concept was first introduced in Texas in 1994. About 120,000 motorists have since completed the course.

Ventura County’s Presiding Municipal Judge Barry L. Klopfer said local judges were initially concerned that the program lacked safeguards.

But after its architects demonstrated about four dozen traps designed to ensnare would-be cheaters, the judges were sold on the idea, he said.

“The concept of a home study program has a lot of advantages for users,” Klopfer said, explaining that people with disabilities or parents with child-care conflicts often cannot attend a daylong traffic school class.

“There is a large segment of the population for whom this is not always possible,” he said.

U.S. Interactive’s 32-year-old president, Scott Owens, dreamed up the home study concept after piling up a string of speeding tickets in college.

Although Ventura County represents his first launching ground in California, Owens hopes to branch out to other regions in the state.

“They are a very innovative court,” Owens said of the local officials. “It just seemed like a natural partnership.”